subdee

sesame_seed's description of the manga: is here. Also includes scans from Dark Horse's translation for the first five volumes. I'd call it violent samurai horror with philosophical overtones, sort of like if you crossed Lone Wolf and Cub with Tenjou Tenge minus the big-breasted fanservice.

...I say this now, but six years ago Blade of the Immortal was the first manga I ever read. So it's got, like, a special place in my heart even if I can never remember any of the names. The characters in this series live through the art and dialogue, they're real and not plastic.

They're also crazy. Poll!

[Poll #580349]
Okay, and here's my crack theory. We know that

1. Manji is immortal because he's stuffed full of flesh-reconstructing worms
They'd be so much more gross if this manga was in color. *shivers*
2. The worms can't re-contruct injuries from before they entered the body
Otherwise Manji would still be able to use his right eye.
3. Manji gets shot/stabbed in the head a lot
Four times and counting!
4. Being stabbed in the head affects his cognitive abilities
In the fight against Maki he mentions that his vision's blurry.

Wouldn't it be sort of neat if, when the worms are re-constructing bits of Manji's exploded brains, they got it wrong sometimes? Like, if the parts of him from before he had the worms put in got...misplaced, or something? He remembers his sister and the hunded guys he offed, but what about the rest? What if it was missing or wrong?

I mean. Every time Manji gets destroyed, a little bit less of him is him and a little bit more is the worms filling in for him. Remember that part with the poison that only affected the worms, way back at the beginning of the series? All the old wounds re-opening? Manji survived then, but he totally wouldn't now -- he'd be, like, a spleen attached to a small piece of spine with a skull on top.

This fic is one of a pair written for chain_of_fics. Before I go on, a quick comm update:

1. I finished tagging all the entries! By author and genre and series and rating and pairing type!
2. To celebrate, I made pie graphs!
3. And completely changed the namescheme on the tags!
4. And also, the community layout and sidebar! -- in other words I went a little nuts. But you can't tell me this page isn't beautiful.

This fanfic is a little weird. I totally blame jaebi_lit for providing an such an existentialist prompt. Written without looking back -- but I had to do Killua/Gon, even if it turned out to be bad Killua/Gon, because it would just be WRONG to only write Kurapika/Leorio.


Title: The Wall (Killua/Gon version)
Rated: PG-13 for violent undertones
Wordcount: 664
Notes: Loosely based on this symbolic personality test. Which you should read if you want this to make any sense (although it probably won't anyway, ummmmm sorry).
Also: One of a pair with this Kurapika/Leorio fic.

( The Wall )

END (Interpretation: THE WALL = DEATH. See here.)

Expecting to do homework after International Talk Like a Pirate Day Party = ahahaha, or should I say arrharrharrharr. It's been three weeks and I'm already a week behind, but Cameroon baked cakes and there were drinking games with rum, and we were all dressed like pirates and wore heavy makeup, and sang pirate songs and danced pirate dances and played pirate games for pirate prizes. And there was a treasure hunt. And sword fights by moonlight with cutlasses! And lame pirate jokes! (What call ye a parrot that's not eaten recently? Polynomeal, har har har.)

...I can already see how this semester is going to go.

The real purpose of this post is to point out the nearly three gigabytes of manga accessible in this post, and also to reiterate for people not on my friends list:

There are a lot of cool things you can do with Gmail these days. You can publilsh emails as a blog; you can turn your 2.5 gigs (and counting!) of email space into a virtual drive on Linux or Windows; and you can make the files stored on that drive accessible to everyone on the net. Not bad!

PS.
I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell last Thursday, but livejournal ate my post on it. Damnation!

PPS.
Raise your hand if you watched FFV7: Advent Children even though you've never played the game or participated in fandom! You recognize Cloud and the guy with his own choir, you've heard about the in-game character death but honestly what's so special about her (the other one's hotter), THERE ARE TOO MANY CHARACTERS IN THIS MOVIE hey that was sort of neat *replays the fight scenes*. I can't be the only one.

PPPS.
New layout, retro sneaker colors.

I took a short break from livejournal to read the first book of CJ Cherryh's Dawnbreaker trilogy and watch anime. Catching up is really starting to kill me; I might have to read on filter once school starts, although I have no idea what I'd cut out beyond a few increasingly annoying communities.

( book&anime babbling )

HIGHLIGHTS from the last week.

( Twelve Kingdoms )
( Initial D )
( Pally's Collab Corner )
( Princess Tutu )
( Naruto )

Fandom Relief Efforts
Pellaz offers fic in exchange for Katrina donations <-- I'm doing this as soon as my House!finances are settled.
Blood for fic <-- exactly what it sounds like. Measures like this are too inefficient to really be effective, but they don't hurt either.
News and help links <-- yasminm is always on top of these things.

I didn't think I'd ever been to New Orleans -- even though Umich always schedules Spring Break to coincide with Mardi Gras -- but I've just realized I have. We took a detour on the way back from Florida (Boca Raton), I think I was five or six. I remember sitting at an outdoor cafe, on a second-story balcony, French Quarter, July, millions of hanging flowers (mostly pink), and I accidentally dropped a really nice fork over the railing and onto the street. After we'd paid the bill we saw that the fork was still there, only it'd been flattened into sheet metal by the traffic.

I still have that former fork.

*gives up on Hurricane Katrina condolence post* See, this is why it's bad to design a hospital system that operates at peak capacity under normal conditions. I think only three people on my flist are really affected, but geeze, my heart goes out to you.

So. That twelve characters meme? I'm not going to do it, partially because I'd rather do the "pair-up-the-characters-in-your-icons-meme" but mostly because my answers won't be nearly as funny as svz_insanity's. Dude, this is the fourth time Fuji's walked in on two other characters having wildly improbable sex!

How would you feel if Seven/Eight [Fuji/Draco] was canon?

svz_insanity: Cry. Like, a lot. And then laugh, because Draco's going to be Fuji's bitch.
sub_divided: *falls out of chair* (XDXD, Candy by petronia)

"One [Tezuka] and Nine [Hermione Granger] are in a happy relationship until Nine [Hermione] suddenly runs off with Four [Sasuke]. One [Tezuka], broken-hearted, has a hot one-night stand with Eleven [L] and a brief unhappy affair with Twelve [Misa], then follows the wise advice of Five [Ryoma] and finds true love with Three [Akira]." What title would you give this fic? Name three people on your friends list who might read it. Name one person who should write it.

svz_insanity: WHY STACY SHOULD NEVER BE GIVEN PIXIE STIXS, COFFEE, AND COMPUTER ACCESS AT FIVE A.M.
svz_insanity: don't you guys dare try!
sub_divided: *g*

So here is the version I left for her in comments. And below is the first half of the expanded version. Because IT REALLY DOES MAKE PERFECT SENSE.*** To be finished, ummm, probably never, which is a shame because I was really looking forward to the Tezuka/Ryoma scene.

...okay, maybe I'll finish by September 6th. Maybe.

( This is a story of LOVE and SELF-DISCOVERY and THE PURITY OF LOVE BETWEEN TWO MEN, which is much more pure than the love between a man and woman because they can understand each other and stuff. )

...I just realized I forgot to assign everyone houses. XD That's the most important part! I only know Tezuka and Shindou (Tezuka's cheerfully oblivious roomate) and Hermione are Griffindor, although Hermione is actually fan!Hermione and therefore more properly a Ravenclaw or Slytherin. Feel free to suggest anyone else.

*** This is probably because the only Harry Potter fics I *ever* read are crossovers or crack pairings or both. So fics like this one (only much better written) are what I think of when I think of Harry Potter. Sad but true.